14 DAY TRIAL // As early as one year ago, MySpace and Facebook were mortal enemies in the social networking war and fighting for the title of the largest social network in the US. At that time, MySpace still had a significant advantage in terms of users, but many knew that the writing was on the wall for the News Corp.-owned social network. But few would have anticipated that, at the start of 2010, MySpace would not only have given up on social networking, but even start deploying Facebook features on some of its proprieties.
Yet, here we are, as the new decade gets under way, Facebook is the clear and undisputed leader in social networking and MySpace is reinventing itself as a content hub, a very popular strategy apparently, shared with Yahoo and AOL to some extent. And, as rumored for quite a while, MySpace has integrated Facebook Connect just on the recently launched Music Video site for now and even here it's limited.
It's not the deepest integration out there, but it's a first step and a clear sign. MySpace has set up a service it dubs "Fan Video" which enables users to select videos from MySpace Music's catalog and create a mashup video which they can post on their Facebook profile. The site enables users to login with their Facebook credentials, post the mashup on their walls and even create ones for their friends. It's a pretty trivial app and it's not going to revolutionize either MySpace or Facebook, but it signals a new type of relationship between the two former adversaries.
MySpace wants to make money from content now and that means pageviews. These days, especially with the younger crowd, Facebook can be a great source of visitors and MySpace is looking to take advantage of that, leaving former rivalries aside. You can be sure that Facebook features will start showing up on other parts of MySpace and that the partnership will be tighter soon enough. It's also a great win for Facebook Connect which, despite increasing competition, is still the most powerful such tool. [via InsideFacebook]